Priory Street – runs in a northeast to southwest position linking Glasgow Road to Calder Street. At its junction with Glasgow Road, stands the Stonefield Tavern. With the slum clearance of the mid 1930’s demolishing many of the most northerly homes of Dixon’s Rows, a County Council programme of 92 brand new homes was started on a site known as the ‘Calder Street site.’
Delayed by adverse weather in January 1936, twenty of the homes had been built by that spring, along Glasgow Road and up Priory Street towards the next proposed site at Calder Street. The houses are made of brick, roughcast with slated roofs. They are double storey of three, four and five apartments and all them still stand today. At the time of construction in 1936, many of the remaining Dixon’s Rows homes had also been condemned and also in the early part of that year, the ground was taken over from William Dixon & Co by the County Council who intended building the remaining 72 homes on the rest of the nearby Calder Street site. The Priory Street homes were built by local builders, Messrs Andrew Wright and Sons, who also had contracts to build 176 homes at Fallside in Uddingston. Priory street once connected Calder Street to Glasgow Road, but is now a cul de sac, with access to Glasgow Road, now prohibited to vehicles.
1936 Dixons Rows Part clearance and building of Priory Street
(c) Taken from the forthcoming definitive Blantyre book, “Blantyre Explained” by Paul D Veverka